[SUCCESS] Gigabyte Designare Z390 (Thunderbolt 3) + i7-9700K + AMD RX 580

[DJ4MC]

My "Akitio Thunder3 Quad X" Thunderbolt3 drive enclosure connects and hot swaps!!
This was the entire reason I decided to build this rig. I could never get it to hot swap with the Alpine Ridge card
even w/ a custom SSDT on my Z370 Build.

Nice, I have the OWC Quad TB3 drive and it hotswaps as well. Do your drives on it show up as "non removable" mine do and I had to exclude them from Time Machine backups lol.

 

[Lensjocky]

Nice, I have the OWC Quad TB3 drive and it hotswaps as well. Do your drives on it show up as "non removable" mine do and I had to exclude them from Time Machine backups lol.

No my "Akitio Thunder3 Quad X" drives mount as external as expected.
TimeMachine doesn't seem interested in them thankfully...

 

[CaseySJ]

will this work on Designare Z170X and i5 Skylake?

Every motherboard, chipset, and CPU generation behaves differently so some degree of customization and experimentation is needed. You can certainly use this Guide as a starting point or a baseline (skip all the custom SSDTs in Post-Installation) and then make adjustments from there as needed.

I've said this before, but it helps to repeat it every now and then:

• If you're in a rush and want instant gratification, then you should go to an Apple Store and get a fully working system in 10 minutes!
• If you're easily flustered (or frustrated) by problems that seem to crop up one after another, then you should also go to an Apple Store and avoid high blood pressure!
• If you're unwilling to read (sometimes long) articles and actually search for solutions -- rather than ask for help the instant you encounter a problem -- then you should also go to an Apple Store.

But if you enjoy a challenge and enjoy finding solutions to problems, and enjoy learning about internal workings of things, and have about 2 to 4 weeks to spend, then Welcome to Hackintosh!!

 

[CaseySJ]

@CaseySJ I'm noticing a static audio click, in my speakers from time to time, anyone got this too when playing videos or working in the finder?

The Z390 Designare seems to have really high quality DACs and power regulation for audio. I'm seeing 96KHz sampling rates for the DAC that feeds the rear headphone jack. So I've been wearing my Sennheiser and Grado headphones regularly and for somewhat long stretches with no static or any other audio artifacts at all.

Because you're driving external speakers, which audio output jack are you using? Are the speakers self-powered or are you going through a preamp/amp? Have you tried a different pair of speakers?

 

[CaseySJ]

There are 5 PCIe slots on my mobo. I have my RX580 on the upper silver PCIe Slot. If I count all slots it is the second one. What I don't get is if the first silver color one is slot 1 or 2. There are only two slots that can accommodate dGPUs, but there are five slots in total. I tried to find the numbering on gigabyte website, but couldn't find it.

Could you please help me to shed some light on this?

By the way, in both settings for Initial Display Output in BIOS: Slot 1 and Slot two I can see boot screen.

The slot closest to the CPU is usually Slot 1. If you can see boot screen when Initial Display Output is set to ether Slot 1 or 2, then that's actually a nice feature! It means the BIOS will look for a video card in any of the x16 slots.

 

[CaseySJ]

Thanks so much for a great detailed guide! This is my first ever hackintosh, and first time building a computer.

I ran into some problems with my graphics card (Sapphire RX580 pulse). First after the build, the computer booted and fans were spinning but no video. I finally got video working after unplugging the graphics card and managed to boot with the card plugged in after changing Initial Display Output to IGFX. But kept running into problems when trying to install hackintosh.

In the end I decided to do the whole process without the card plugged in and did the framebuffer patch and managed to get everything up and running without any problems. Then I plugged in the card and now it’s recognized (shows up in system info) but it doesn’t seem to be doing anything. Wasn't able to render files and the Valley benchmark was at 10fps. Also I don't get any video after booting if it's plugged into the GPU, but works fine when plugged into HDMI on the motherboard. However I'm able to switch from the hdmi port on the motherboard to hdmi port on the gpu after booting and it shows video.

This seems to a common problem with Sapphire Pulse cards, and it may be due to newer firmware (called VBIOS) on those cards. When you changed Initial Display Output to IGFX, only the IGFX will show BIOS and Clover screens. But when Mojave is nearly finished with the boot process, it will find and activate the RX 580 as well. So your HDMI on RX 580 will work once Mojave is booted.

However, it seems you want to change Initial Display Output to PCIe Slot 1 and use RX 580 as the primary video card. In this case your HDMI output will be blank until Mojave starts.

@Lensjocky has been trying to fix the same problem. He enabled CSM in BIOS -- so you can try that as well. Follow his posts right here above and below this one.

Have been wondering if it might have worked the whole time if I used a display port cable.

I don't think DisplayPort will help, but you're welcome to try.

Also wondering if it's the framebuffer patch that it's causing this now?
Do you have any possible sollutions?

As mentioned, please follow the posts by @Lensjocky right here...

 

[CaseySJ]

Alright, progress has been made!

If I leave "CSM Support -> Enabled" I'm able to see Gigabyte boot screen & Clover on startup.

System boots and runs fine (for the most part): sleep, audio, wifi, usb all fine.

That's a good finding. Unlike Vt-d or XHCI-Handoff, which have strict requirements, CSM can be either enabled or disabled; it's just a matter of seeing which setting works best.

Bluetooth is not working, I get a "Bluetooth not Available" warning. I'll work on that in a bit.
For some reason my SATA 4 and SATA 5 connected drivers are not mounting, not showing as connected in BIOS even though they are connected and powered.

Were Bluetooth and SATA 4/5 drives working prior to CSM change? And if you disable CSM now, will they start working again?

THE GOOD NEWS!

My "Akitio Thunder3 Quad X" Thunderbolt3 drive enclosure connects and hot swaps!!
This was the entire reason I decided to build this rig. I could never get it to hot swap with the Alpine Ridge card
even w/ a custom SSDT on my Z370 Build.

Glad to hear it! I'll add this to the Thunderbolt 3 Experiences section of the Guide.

 

[CaseySJ]

This is interesting. I am fully up and running with my second monitor added (I did all the setup and tweaking with one monitor using HDMI) I didn't notice till yesterday that when I boot now, I have black screens until the Mojave Login. NO BIOS screen splash initially, no verbose text flying across the screen. I have two monitors on Display Port. Will experiment later but I know my settings were per the guide with initial video output set to PCI1 etc. It isn't an issue for me as of now but should I need to troubleshoot later etc. could be an issue. I am using this Sapphire card. I am on BIOS F6a

This seems to be a very common theme with Sapphire RX 580 Pulse. My MSI RX 580 Gaming X does not have any such problem. I get BIOS and Clover screens from HDMI and DisplayPort on my LG 1080p and ASUS 4K monitors during boot.

I really feel like posting a WARNING in the Guide against the purchase of Sapphire Pulse cards...but will wait until more tests are done.

Have you also tried enabling CSM in BIOS? And if so, do you lose Bluetooth or SATA drives?

 

[Lensjocky]

That's a good finding. Unlike Vt-d or XHCI-Handoff, which have strict requirements, CSM can be either enabled or disabled; it's just a matter of seeing which setting works best.


Were Bluetooth and SATA 4/5 drives working prior to CSM change? And if you disable CSM now, will they start working again?


Glad to hear it! I'll add this to the Thunderbolt 3 Experiences section of the Guide.

No Bluetooth and SATA 4/5 drives were not working prior to CSM change.
I'm about to pull the WiFi/Bluetooth card that came installed on the Z390 Designare board and see if that helps my Bluetooth troubles.

 

[CaseySJ]

No Bluetooth and SATA 4/5 drives were not working prior to CSM change.
I'm about to pull the WiFi/Bluetooth card that came installed on the Z390 Designare board and see if that helps my Bluetooth troubles.

No need to pull that out as long as you have the Custom USB SSDT (filename starts with SSDT-UIAC-...) installed in CLOVER/ACPI/patched folder because that SSDT disables the internal WiFi/Bluetooth card. Without that SSDT, the real Bluetooth card will not activate.